This application is based on Korean Patent Application No. 2003-5077 filed on Jan. 25, 2003, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an optical recording/reproducing apparatus, and more particularly to a detecting device for detecting a writable area before writing or reading of data with respect to an optical recording medium, and a detection method thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, one example of a rewritable optical recording media which enables repeatable writing is an optical disc such as a rewritable compact disc (CD−RW), a rewritable digital versatile disc (DVD−RW, DVD−RAM, DVD+RW).
As shown in a conceptual view of FIG. 1, an optical recording medium is divided into a header area for storing information data, and a user data area on which user data is stored. The user data area (Land/Groove track) is divided into a writable area on which data is recorded and a non-writable area on which data is not recorded.
The header area is placed in a predetermined portion of a sector on an optical recording medium, and the optical pickup (not shown) of an optical recording/reproducing apparatus can recognize a sector number, a sector type, a user data area, and so on, through information recorded in the header area. As described, even though the user data area can be recognized through the information on the header area, a writable area detection device has to be provided in order to precisely detect data-recorded recording portions of the user data area. The reason for detecting data-recorded portions of the user data area is to process only a reproduction signal read from a writable area separated from a non-writable area on which data is not recorded. That is, the recording portions have to be precisely detected in order to prevent errors of determining as a reproduction signal noise components from the non-writable area.